The Purge
by Califaction
Summary: Drabble. Seto Kaiba's solution to the problem of Yugi's superior dueling. Dark.


Angsty Seto/Yuugi, because the angst is love.

There's nothing to see but darkness, nothing to feel but darkness and the biting chains around his wrists and his ankles. The only thing he can hear is a recording of Seto's voice, usually muttering, but sometimes screaming. It's weird at first to hear Seto screaming, when he is so cool and collected that it seems he has locked his humanity in the bottom drawer of a battered, dusty mahogany desk.

"You're mine, you're mine, you're mine, YOU'RE MINE, you're mine…"

He doesn't know how long it's been since he's seen daylight. His stomach says more than 24 hours—so does his sandpaper-dry throat. The puzzle has been taken from him, but he can still feel the presence of it huddling in a corner of his mind: strong, black, and scared. Shadow games don't work here. It can't protect him from this.

Thick strips of sticky tape form an X over his mouth; they catch on the skin of his lips and cheeks like the pincers of a desert scarab, but he keeps trying to breathe, hoping the moisture on his breath will loosen the tape's grasp. He has been hoping for so long.

Pant, pant, pant through his nostrils.

"You're mine, you're mine, you're mine, YOU'RE MINE, you're mine…"

His nose begins to run, and he imagines he can hear the trickle of the mucus over the tape and down to his chin, and the drop of it off of his bowed head to the—whatever he is standing on, which is a material so soft he catches himself wondering if there's anything holding him up at all. Maybe he's really falling through the sky, about to crash into the Earth.

He begins to sweat when he thinks that, using up precious water, and his breath comes faster while a sliver of panic runs up his spine and down to his cramped, trembling hands, callused on the right ring finger because his grandpa can't afford a word processor for him to type his school papers, and which are nimble enough to make it easy work for him to cheat at cards (Joey taught him, but he doesn't.)

Usually he's hyperventilating, or about to, when he realizes the speeding shinkasen track his mind has taken, and snares the thoughts in a loop of fine Egyptian gold. Maybe the puzzle does help in some ways.

"You're mine, YOU'RE MINE, you're mine…"

The recording stops. Yuugi isn't even aware of it at first, but gradually realizes the acoustics are all wrong and the mumbling and screaming is in his head. There is silence for the first time since his capture. There is also shredding light. He snaps his eyes shut.

"Hello, Yuugi. You're such a great duelist, hey? Where are your cards now?" These are irresistibly novel words. He can remember others, but they seem far away. The novelty is almost enough to take the sting out of Seto's tone, which drips and tries to melt sweetly through the floor. He still can't tell what the floor is made of, just that it's black. This is more than he knew before. This is good.

Yuugi opens his eyes and flinches.

Seto stands before him, sipping from a steaming teacup composed of exquisitely painted bone china. The halo of white light surrounding him makes Yuugi blink, but on the positive side he has a solid look at Seto's face, which is distinctly gleeful and somehow malevolent at the same time. Seeing it now, where before it was so ambitious, when before he had interpreted that ambition so wrongly, when before Seto had smiled at him and seemed to mean it but he hadn't…

His mind crumbles. He feels the puzzle flailing around for all the pieces, but not even it can keep small fragments from spilling over the edge.

"Yuugi Moto, duelling champion. When I'm done with you, you'll duel for me or even die for me. Love me if I want, and probably if I don't. Everyone will see how I have reduced you."

He has a sudden image of Seto's head as a lemon with red skin and pimento olives for eyes, and laughs, muffled snorting against his gag, crinkles around his eyes. There's a muffled, far-away sounding shatter, and when Yuugi opens his eyes the bone china cup lies smashed next to Seto's polished black boots.

Seto's face is twisted into a furious mask, with white edges around his mouth and nose, his deep blue eyes bulging unpleasantly. His hair, gelled to perfection, stays the same. For some reason this makes Yuugi laugh again. His empty belly cramps, and the smile makes the tape pinch, but he laughs until Seto steps forward and backhands him, sending a hot flash of agony across his left cheekbone.

Yuugi grins, and then winces as pain races up his cheek. Score!

When Seto snaps his fingers, two heavyset men—they are wearing pleased expressions and a frightening assortment of instruments that look as if they could cause a lot of pain—step out of the darkness and into the light. The corner of his mind where the puzzle is whimpers. So does Yuugi.

Seto leaves, but his voice begins chanting again.

"YOU'RE MINE…"

----


End file.
